Michelle Goldberg wrote a column yesterday acknowledging that Graham Platner turned out to be a terrible mistake for her party. Most of it is stuff you’ve heard by now.
Hopefully, by the time you read this, Graham Platner will have dropped out of the Senate race in Maine. If he hasn’t, he needs to, immediately.
His campaign, which started with such excitement and inspired so many people in Maine, has become a shameful catastrophe. What’s left — besides finding a Democrat to run in his place — is figuring out what, if anything, can be learned from this debacle.
After walking through a list of people who are to blame for this catastrophe, Goldberg admits that she herself deserves some of the blame.
While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself. Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke, I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was “nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.” If anything, he seems to be significantly worse.
I give her credit for owning up but I think this one paragraph downplays just how much of a Platner booster she was last October when he was already in trouble. Here’s a bit more of her original take on the man.
First came the stories about his years of posts on Reddit message boards, which ranged from impolitic — in one, he called himself a communist — to offensive, and which led to the resignation of his political director, Genevieve McDonald. Then it emerged that Platner had a skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi Totenkopf. He said that he and his buddies had chosen the image off a wall while drunk on shore leave in Croatia, which one of them confirmed to The Washington Post. What was harder to explain was why he’d kept it for 18 years, getting it covered up only last week…
But people in Maine kept telling me that on the ground, the Platner campaign still looked very much alive. Sure, some people had decided he’s unacceptable or unelectable. But many in the grass roots resented what they saw as an attempt by Democratic leadership to take down Platner and thus boost Janet Mills, the state’s 77-year-old governor, who announced her Senate campaign two weeks ago…
So I decided to go to Maine to see the Platner campaign for myself…
I have no idea whether Platner will win the primary, or if he can beat the incumbent senator, Susan Collins. But he’s nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online. And the crowds he’s bringing out — some of the largest in Maine, I heard repeatedly, since Barack Obama ran for president — are testament to a roiling discontent among Democrats that seems bound, one way or another, to transform the party.
She raved about him.
Onstage, Platner is magnetic. Like Obama, he seems to promise a politics that is fundamentally progressive while going beyond debased partisan sniping. He shows his audience the respect of at least seeming to level with them. Perhaps most important, he situates his campaign within the context of America’s great social movements and makes people feel they could be a part of one…
The feeling in the room, among people desperate for someone to chart a way out of our current disaster, was electric. Before the audience questions even began, Townsend told me Platner had won his vote. Afterward, several other people who went in undecided said they were leaning his way.
So, yeah, I think she deserves some of the blame. She downplayed the signs that he had serious problems as much as anyone in the media and she did it from the pages of the NY Times. I think the Babylon Bee made this headline for Goldberg.
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 6, 2026
But as much as I’m often not a fan of her work, at least she did take some responsibility. You can’t say the same for the folks at the Bulwark. They are washing their hands of Platner while simultaneously claiming they were never in his camp in the first place.
Going forward, every reference to The Bulwark should state, “The Bulwark, who had a columnist who argued Graham Platner should be the Democratic nominee in 2028…” pic.twitter.com/Vdh1ZgWSnK
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) July 7, 2026
Founder and publisher Sarah Longwell pushed back on that.
I’m only gonna do this once, because there’s only so much time one can devote to bad faith attacks, but The Bulwark overall has been extremely Platner-skeptical, while still endeavoring to analyze his popularity with Maine voters. I disagreed with this take at the time, but JVL… https://t.co/mauxFudt9B
— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) July 7, 2026
I’m only gonna do this once, because there’s only so much time one can devote to bad faith attacks, but The Bulwark overall has been extremely Platner-skeptical, while still endeavoring to analyze his popularity with Maine voters. I disagreed with this take at the time, but JVL is clear in this piece that he doesn’t like Platner and worries about populist movements in general. As he says in this piece:
“That’s a powerful thing but I will be honest: I do not like it. Not one bit. I’ve seen that movie before.”
He also makes clear at the top of the piece: “This is not a brief for (or against) Platner. I’m only trying to analyze what likely will happen, I’m not arguing for what should happen.”
This is also annoying to me personally since I’ve taken so much heat for being unwilling to get on board with Platner from the Left. Anyone who has actually listened to us wrestle with the Platner dynamic knows that this characterization of The Bulwark is a lie.
Is it a lie? Longwell may not have been Platner’s largest media fan but her outlet certainly published lots of positive spin.
Your rag seemed pretty protective of him not long ago. Are you going to write a revisionist history book like Jake Tapper did?https://t.co/ptNxXSWhwz
— DespeRobbo (@Desperobbo) July 7, 2026
You said he was a gamble worth taking. pic.twitter.com/fFVjzZnITF
— GeorgeSmith2 (@WestMichP2) July 7, 2026
It was Tim Miller who said that. Here’s the clip.
“It is absolutely critical that the Democrats figure out how in the fuck to win working-class white people if they ever want to have power or control again.”
Tim Miller on why backing Graham Platner in the Maine Senate race may be a gamble worth taking. pic.twitter.com/RQ1ikZwckq
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) March 4, 2026
At best, the Bulwark was sending mixed signals on Platner.
He doesn’t feel fresh and new anymore? What happened? pic.twitter.com/R79pxBRZSA
— GeorgeSmith2 (@WestMichP2) July 7, 2026
Tim Miller was a prick to anyone who wasn’t on the Platner train — he frowned at you through a whole discussion of Platner.
Maybe it was just Miller’s coziness with all the MSNow and PSA Platner fanboys that made him a Platner simp. https://t.co/howhKTuU4X
— 🇺🇦Banquo (@BanquoDyar) July 7, 2026
Here is Tim saying “My case for Platner” less than 2 months ago. That doesn’t sound “extremely Platner-skeptical” to me.https://t.co/JAjmmxY8WM
— CT Dude (@CTDude3) July 7, 2026
I can’t say for certain what the Bulwark writers thought about Platner
But I can say for certain that they did not support or defend @lyndseyfifield when she came forward, even though they know enough people in the DC sphere to know that she was telling the truth https://t.co/Hp1oZk3Sar
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) July 7, 2026
People in your employ, who write for your outlet, know Lyndsey quite well. They knew she was telling the truth. Of all the outlets that could have taken the opportunity to prove they weren’t partisan shitheads, the Bulwark had a golden moment. And yet. https://t.co/p6MpI7BOk7
— Emily Zanotti 🦝 (@emzanotti) July 7, 2026
So there you have it. The least, pro-Platner person at the Bulwark is out there shielding the rest of them from any responsibility. They make Michelle Goldberg look good by comparison.
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